~ Paul Auster, City of Glass

Visualise Us

Addressing members of the police force undertaking diploma studies Police Deputy-Commissioner General Levie Sibanda, said:

“The organisation does not take lightly acts of misdemeanour and those found wanting should be dealt with accordingly.”

For once the Herald does not exaggerate when it states the ZRP is merely ‘concerned’. It’s all very well to say this at a ceremony, but what action is being taken? Which officers are under investigation for soliciting bribes, excessive use of force and dereliction of duty?

Read the full article here

The Global Journal has released the top one hundred best Non Governmental Organizations in the world with Wikimedia Foundation topping the list for its efforts of coming up with the famous Wikipedia. According to Global Journal the criteria which was used to come up with the top hundred covered areas like:

Innovation
Effectiveness
Impact
Efficiency and value for money
Transparency and Accountability
Sustainability
Strategic and Financial Management
Peer Review

Some of the big organisations ranked in the top ten and operating in Zimbabwe include Oxfam, Care International, International Rescue Committee and Medicine Sans Frontiers. The only African based organisation in the top ten list is a Kenyan organiation called Ushahidi. The organisation specialises in developing free and open source software for information collection, visualization and interactive mapping. Ushahidi developed a software package, to map incidents of violence and peace efforts from reports submitted via the web and mobile phones during the Kenyan elections in 2007.

Source

Here’s an excerpt from an interview I’ve just done with the Executive Director of the Southern African Parliamentary Support Trust, John Makamure:

You work with both Civil Society and Parliament. For a very long time Civil Society has been advocating for media freedom, but obviously the legislative environment does not allow for this. Why do you think civil society is not lobbying parliamentarians directly to introduce the Private Member Bills that would change this?

I am also very concerned that our civil society friends are not taking advantage of the democratic space available in Parliament. Advocacy requires that you exploit any opportunities that are available. We have supported quite a number of public hearings that are conducted by committees in Parliament. We fund those. And we try to send out information to members of civic society. But the response has been very poor on some public policy matters, which we believe would be relevant to those organisations. We don’t understand the apathy. We need civic society to engage Parliament more and work with the committees and individual members to improve the public policy environment.

Pretty damn cool …. from Flavorwire

How’s this for a clever concept? Inspired by an envelope of foreign stamps that she received from her dad over a decade ago now, New York-based artist Molly Rausch creates paintings that explore the background world that exists outside of their tiny frame. She starts each piece by gluing the stamp to a sheet of paper, and then uses watercolor and gouache to extend the small-scale scenes by freehand; rather than researching her subjects ahead of time, Rausch lets her imagination take her to strange and interesting places. Click through to see what we mean.